No More Politics as Usual: The DCLeaks Only Confirmed What Most People Already Knew

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Two troubling issues have come to define Democratic Party’s flawed 2016 election campaign -- the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) role in undermining the Bernie Sanders candidacy and Hillary Clinton’s characterization of Trump supporters as “deplorables.”

The website DCLeaks released a trove of documents revealing that the DNC and its chairperson, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), rigged the Democratic presidential primaries favoring Clinton over Sanders. In response, Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign her position and CNN dismissed Donna Brazile from her on-air commentator position for providing the Clinton team with information about an upcoming debate.

Last week a Florida federal judge, William Zloch, a Reagan appointee, dismissed a class-action suit brought by Sanders’ supporters claiming the DNC’s actions violated the organization’s charter and defrauded its donors by undermining Sanders campaign. He ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing and found, “Not one of them alleges that they ever read the DNC’s charter or heard the statements they now claim are false before making their donations.”

A Newsweek reporter accurately summarized the meaning of the decision: “The DNC reportedly argued that the organization’s neutrality among Democratic campaigns during the primaries was merely a ‘political promise,’ and therefore it had no legal obligations to remain impartial throughout the process.” The decision is a word to the wise for those thinking of running as an independent or “progressive” Democrat.

Video clips of Clinton’s statement may be long recalled as a signature moment in her campaign: "You know, to just be grossly generalistic [sic], you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America."

This is the same distain she expressed in 1996, but then it was targeted at a very different group of Americans. When questioned about her position regarding how the legal system operates in African-American communities, especially young people, she infamously declared, “They are often the kinds of kids that are called 'super-predators.'" An she added: "No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel."

These two issues of the 2016 election – dirty-dealing two a legitimate political threat and disdain for working-class people -- illuminate the deeper crisis faced by the Democratic establishment. The party has an unprecedented opportunity to regain the House of Representatives in the 2018 election and recapture the Oval Office in 2020. The stalled Republican Congress and Trump’s falling numbers in the polls potentially indicates an unprecedented opportunity for the Democrats to regain political power. Sadly, the DNC and party may well fumble the opportunity as they did in 2016.

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Under Bill Clinton’s “New Democrats” and subsequent presidents, economic prosperity was guaranteed through global hegemony. The working class was abandoned for up-market tech hipsters and con-man financiers. The growth of capitalism was secured through U.S. intervention, overt and covert, everywhere and anywhere profit demanded. Globalizing capitalism disrupts this hegemony.

Trump’s presidency is a testament to the deepening disillusionment gripping the nation. Much has been written about the travails of the white working class and poor people of all racial, ethnic or national backgrounds. Discontent is mounting reflected in the increased number of popular demonstrations and protests as well as incidents of racially- and religiously-motivated criminal attacks. Trump changed the game of establishment politics and now is president. The Democrats are floundering, unsure of how to face the demands of a trying historical test, one distinguished by economic disruption and social dislocation.

The Democrats, overseen by Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), Wall Street’s inside man, have no clue as to what to do. The social order is in crisis and he is truly old school, a pol playing the old game. He lacks the vision to see what’s going on, let alone do anything to address it. Equally challenging, he seems to be losing party discipline, with Wall Street backers in panic.

In July, ten Democratic senators and representatives, led by Schumer and House Minority LeaderNancy Pelosi (CA), gathered in Berryville, VA, to announce the party’s new agenda, “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future.” It was a dubious attempt to bridge the divide between the moderate and progressive wings that split the party during the election.

The party pep-rally followed the earlier announcement by the appointments of the tag-team dynamic duo -- Thomas Perez (ex-Sec. of Labor Secretary), backed by the Clinton-Obama “reformist” branch, and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), representing the Sanders or “progressive” wing -- to chair and deputy-chair of the party. Whether they can hold the two contesting wings together is their grate challenge.

Sadly, Trump’s election and the virtual collapse of Clinton’s New Democrats provides the American left with an unprecedented opportunity to contest political power. The Tea Party, a Koch-backed rightwing insurgent, captured the Republican Party in the wake of Obama’s 2008 electoral victory. Could insurgent “progressives” -- those who came out for Sanders, who’ve lost faith in “new”-old Dems and the millions who simply didn’t vote in ’16 -- find a radical voice? Time will tell.

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Trump’s numerous executive orders, Tweets and statements – to say nothing of his administration’s regressive policies – are provoking incredulousness among a growing number of socially-minded Americans. His ban on Muslims, support for pipeline construction, dismissal of transgender young people and wink-and-nod attitude toward white nationalists are but a few of his reactionary stands. In response, Americans are mobilizing to intervene.

Unless impeached or otherwise removed from office, Trump has three-plus more long years to inflict pain and suffering on a ever-growing proportion of the American people.

Today, Democrats follow -- do not lead! -- the popular insurgency spreading through the country. The push for political change is coming from different directions. The post-Inauguration Women’s March and the widespread rage over the white nationalist actions in Charlottesville, VA, are but two examples of the grassroots insurgency spreading through the country. These actions bespeak a restiveness seeking a new political voice.

Activists – and ordinary, traditionally a-political people -- are using the “democratizing” powers of digital media – the Internet, social media, websites, emails, instant messaging and good-old phone trees -- to organize. In addition to large popular mobilizations, still other initiatives are underway.

Grab Your Wallet was started by Shannon Coulter and has targeted the Trump brand; its invisible effort seems to have contributed to Nordstrom’s decision to drop Ivanka Trump’s product line. The Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United launched the Sanctuary Restaurantproject; it notes, “hundreds of restaurant owners, consumers, and workers have joined the movement.”

Indivisibility, the online resource, believes “resistance is local” and seeks to facilitate “groups taking indivisible action.” Originally developed by Democrats to mirror Tea Party organizing policies, it is designed to promote local activities preparing for the next Congressional elections. The group claims that “more than 4,500 local groups have signed up to resist the Trump agenda in nearly every congressional district in the country.”

More old-school, 3rd-party organizing seems to be moving into high gear. Parties like the Greens, Working Families and socialist groups of every stripe – from Trotskyites, to Marxist-Leninists to Avakian followers – are organizing at colleges, at rallies and demonstrations.

The Sanders campaign has spawned two groups to further his message – Our Revolution and Brand New Congress. Both seem to be more conventional, inside the Belt Way, centrally-organized groups.

The Progressive reported that, “On the eve of its launch, eight of fifteen [Our Revolution] staffers walked out, protesting the leadership of [Jeff] Weaver, who they say prioritizes raising money from big donors and using television advertising over ground-level organizing.” Most recently, Our Revolution’s Facebook site reports 279,619 people like it and287,487 people follow it.

Brand New Congress is a political action committee (PAC) that backs a comprehensive “progressive” platform and seeks to run 400-plus candidates in 2018. Corbin Trent, one of the group’s six “core team” members, says it will require “one of the largest grassroots campaigns in the history of American politics.” Its website identifies a first-group of eight candidates its backing; other candidates are to be announced soon. As of yearend 2016, it had raised $250,000 and is seeking nearly a half-billion dollars -- ‘“about double’” Bernie’s stunning $227 million”—to pull off its ambitious goal.

Nationwide insurgent protests are challenging not simply Trump’s policies and those of his Congressional Republican handmaidens, but the compromised Democrats. Mass mobilizations and innumerable local actions are giving way to organizing that could shake-up the bankrupt electoral system.

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The U.S. political system might be fracturing, if not fragmenting, into something unanticipated. The political graveyard is littered with the carcasses of failed 3rd parties, but something more fundamental seems underway. New political initiatives are underway and the two major parties are poised for a possible break-up, but along very different ideological lines.

The Republicans have been splintering since the 2010 election when the rightwing Tea Party insurgency, backed by Koch and other rightwing billionaires, captured a significant slice of the Congressional delegation. The power of the establishment or country-club Republicans was contest and a new political force gained significant power, one furthering inequality, social repression and a strengthened military-police state. This shift ushered in a period of legislative gridlock that has soured the American public on the do-nothing Washington.

Trump is an opportunistic huckster, a 21stcentury P.T. Barnum, who, sadly, lacks Barnum’s progressive social values. Trump is an ego-driven macho man, the false self as the last-stand of a post-Fitzgerald Gatsby-esq character; he is a president always on stage. He is, as the Situationist’s identified a half-century ago, a living commodity spectacle. Often forgotten, some say Gatsby was inspired by the Prohibition-era gangster, Owney “The Killer” Madden.

Trump seeks to reconfigure the Republican Party’s identity to mirror his own bully-boy image. Yet, as each new kerfuffle plays out, mainstream Republican stalwarts are jumping ship, refusing to support the president, commander-in-thief.

Nevertheless, he still strongly appeals to a sizable and receptive segment of dissatisfied white working- and middle-class. These include many who live in what Hollywood executives used to call “the fly-over states,” the American between Los Angeles and New York.

The political confrontation that accompanied the 1968 Chicago convention destabilized the Democratic Party -- the whole world was watching! – for decades. In the race for president, two VPs, Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey; in the ‘72 election, Nixon routed Sen. George McGovern (SD). The Democrats regained power with Bill Clinton’s victory in ’92; he reconstituted the party, establishing the formative neo-liberal period of globalization during which the U.S. was normalized. The all-American political 16-year-long roller-coaster of first Bush-II and then Obama administrations codified economic and social stagnation and instability. The U.S. is undergoing a structure crisis and the new normal to nowhere.

Sanders unexpected popular appeal in ‘16, especially among younger voters, disrupted the Clinton machine’s well-scripted plan. The DCLeak revelations as to the complicity of party officials in attempting to suppress Sanders campaign only confirmed what most people already knew — the game is rigged. In today’s new-speak, all Democrats are “progressives.” How long after the truce between Clinton “liberals” and Sanders “radicals,” of Perez and Ellison, will the progressive fiction of unity prevail?

Amidst the pull-and-pushes of politics, a new multi-party system might emerge and change the nation’s political landscape. A possible break-up of the traditional two-party system might involve, for example, the two parties morphing into four parties. In this scenario, each major party would split into two factions, establishment and radical, whether of the left for Democrats or right for Republicans – whatever “left” and “right” might mean. These parties could likely include Libertarian and Green parties, but also a host of single-issue factions, far-left groupings and far-right white, Christian nationalist.

A clock is ticking; the current political system is being squeezed by the demands of a new capitalist global order. In the U.S., how this possible political realignment plays out – or if it doesn’t – depends on three factors: (i) changes in demographics, (ii) changes in socio-economics and (iii) changes in ideological beliefs. The changing composition of the American people – in terms ethnic makeup, age-cohort and social class -- is one axis of tension; the social economy, of wages and growing inequality, is a second; and mass, popular beliefs or values is another.

Old-world politics is playing out in the minuet waltzed by the Trump-Republican leading and the Democratic following. This form of politics has held sway in the U.S. for more than a century may no longer work. What comes next will shape the nation’s future.

David is a writer who critically explores American history, public policy, media technology and sexuality. He regularly contributes to AlterNet, Black Star News, CounterPunch, New York Journal of Books, Salon, Sexuality & Culture and Truthout. His most recent book is Sin, Sex & Subversion: How What Was Taboo in 1950s New York Has Become America’s New Normal (Carrel, 2016).